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To complete our critique of ‘Learning from Experience’ two major tasks seem to present themselves. The first of these is to build upon the description of alpha-function by examining its relation to the three functions, love (L), hate (H) and knowing (K) which Bion selects as the three major types of emotional experiences to whose ‘sense impressions’ alpha-function is applied for the generating of dream-thoughts and the membrane of the contact barrier differentiating conscious and unconscious, thus making possible the binocular vision which psycho-analysis exploits in its method of study. The second would be to examine the prototype of relationship, namely the baby-breast as container-contained, in which learning from experience is conceived to come into existence as a possibility (phylo- and ontogenetically, one supposes), to see if Bion has succeeded in laying the foundations for a theory of the emotions for the first time in the history of psycho-analytical thought. It certainly is one of his intentions.
Before embarking on these two critical tasks it might be useful to put to one side for future consideration an aspect of the mode of presentation of the ideas in this little book which does almost universally stir every negative feeling. This is the quasimathematical form in which the ideas are presented, with Greek letters whose names most people never knew, plus signs, dots, erotic symbols, and letters of various sorts. In Chapter Five the use of the ‘empty’ concept of alpha- and beta- was defended as a methodological proceedure. But it was also suggested that this is an inevitable part of the movement in any science, that a theory should begin relatively empty, at least, and gather its meaning as it snow-balls along - or, of course, fail to do so. That methodological fact was not seen in itself to justify the use of Greek letters. But the wish to avoid ‘premature’ filling of the emptiness by virtue of the employment of words for a name, which words would in them